Trading Moment: Tech Stocks Pulled Down the Market, BTC Attempts to Reclaim the $70,000 Mark But Fails

Daily market key data review and trend analysis, produced by PANews.

Macro Market

On Thursday, U.S. stocks were dragged down by weakness in tech stocks. The S&P 500 index fell 0.54% to 6908.85 points, the Nasdaq index plunged 1.18% to 22878.38 points, nearly giving back the gains from Wednesday. In contrast, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose slightly by 0.03% to 49499.20 points. Yields on U.S. Treasury bonds across all maturities generally fell, with the 10-year Treasury yield dropping below 4%, marking a new low since late November last year.

Amid rising risk-averse sentiment, speculation about interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve has emerged again, with former governor Stephen Malan signaling a strong dovish stance. He publicly called for a 100 basis point rate cut by 2026, highlighting that overly high compliance costs are suppressing bank credit, while weak inflationary pressures provide support for the future rate cut stance of the new Federal Reserve chairman nominee Kevin Walsh.

At the same time, geopolitical tensions further intensified the market's risk-averse instincts, with WTI crude oil experiencing a slight drop of 0.15% after wide fluctuations. Vance has entered the U.S.-Iran negotiations and will meet with the Omani Foreign Minister on Friday to promote the U.S.-Iran nuclear talks and prevent the outbreak of war. Meanwhile, Pakistan launched fierce airstrikes on the Afghan Taliban, declaring that "patience has run out" and openly initiating war. Border conflicts between the two sides have resulted in over 70 deaths since last October.

AI Sector Winds

The AI sector is at a critical stage of narrative reconstruction, with funds gradually shifting from a "seller's logic" to the application side. According to Goldman Sachs data, short positions in the software industry have reached a seven-year high, while long positions have dropped to a freezing point. In this narrative switch, a deep report released by Deutsche Bank has provoked deep reflection on Wall Street. The report predicts two extreme outcomes for AI development: either, like Marx's prophecy and Musk's vision, AI completely replaces labor and leads to a reconstruction of capitalism; or history repeats itself, with AI merely serving as a technical enablement for humanity.

Moreover, tech giant Nvidia saw its stock drop 5.7% during trading after reporting a 73% year-on-year increase in revenue, due to market concerns about the sustainability of AI spending, ultimately closing down 5.49%. At the same time, retail investors' net purchases of Nvidia shares hit a new high since 2012. The market also reported that the DeepSeek V4 model is providing early access to domestic suppliers, its new model codenamed Sealion-lite features a million-level context window and is natively multimodal, seen as a significant signal that could bypass the Nvidia ecosystem, exacerbating panic sell-offs in the chip sector. Similarly, Baidu, which is also focusing on the application end, has delivered its transformation report, with its AI cloud business reaching over 30 billion yuan in annual revenue for the first time, and its core AI business now accounting for 43% of total revenue from its general business, successfully offsetting the gloom of traditional business shrinkage.

Faced with the efficiency revolution of the AI era, companies have begun drastic measures for survival, with financial technology giant Block announcing the layoff of 4,000 employees, reducing nearly half its workforce. CEO Jack Dorsey clearly stated that he would fully bet on AI-driven operational efficiency, and this decisive organizational restructuring won frantic pursuit from the capital market, with stock prices surging over 24% after hours.

Bitcoin Market

The overall cryptocurrency market is shrouded in risk-averse sentiment, with the fear and greed index slightly rising to 13 but still not breaking free from extreme fear. Affected by the pullback in U.S. tech stocks and rising macro risk-averse sentiment, Bitcoin failed to reclaim the $70,000 threshold and fell below the $68,000 trend line. Despite the U.S. spot ETF experiencing three consecutive days of net inflows, panic sentiment in the derivatives market remains strong. This Friday, $7.8 billion worth of Bitcoin options will be delivered, with the largest pain point at $75,000. Current market sentiment is relatively cautious, with unbias data showing that 57% of analysts are bullish in the short term.

Bearish Viewpoint

The core logic of the bearish camp lies in the uncertainty of macro liquidity and the suppression of historical cycle rules. They believe that the current rebound is merely a trap within a bear market, and the real bottom is far from being reached.

Trader Roman points out that previous bear market cycles have approached an 80% decline, while the current pullback from its peak is only about 53%, with monthly and weekly charts showing no signs of reversal.
Analyst Rekt Capital emphasizes that the shortest Bitcoin bear market in history lasted 365 days, whereas the current bear market has only lasted about 140 days, making it too early to talk about the end of the bear market, as the 200-week moving average is exerting strong downward pressure.
Analyst Willy Woo warns that if the global macro environment weakens significantly, $30,000 or even $16,000 will be the last line of defense to maintain a long-term bull market structure.

Bullish Viewpoint

The bullish camp seeks support from on-chain data, institutional capital flows, and structural cycles. They firmly believe that the selling pressure has dried up, and the market is on the eve of a powerful reversal.

Binance Research believes that Bitcoin is nearing a structural bottom, and the current divergence of BTC from global M2 money supply results from structural distortions. Once software stocks find a bottom, the mechanical linkage between tech stocks and Bitcoin will fade away.
Analyst Willy Woo states that the selling pressure from this round of investors seems to have temporarily come to an end, and the market may trade sideways to consolidate, with the fourth quarter being a good time to end the bear market trend.
Santiment indicates that the number of wallets holding over 100 BTC continues to grow, suggesting that wealth is concentrating in "whales," and historically, this increase in whale wallets often occurs during an accumulation phase that supports price recovery.

Ethereum Market

Ethereum's performance is highly correlated with the overall market, fluctuating slightly around $2,000. On-chain data shows that the MVRV Z-Score of ETH has dropped to the historical accumulation range, and the volatility of Ethereum on Binance has surged to a 12-month high, indicating that the market is experiencing intense repricing. This Friday, $961 million worth of Ethereum options will expire, with a put/call ratio of 0.77 and the largest pain point at $2,200. The current market sentiment is in a recovery period after extreme pessimism, with bottom-fishing funds eager to enter.

Bearish Viewpoint

The bearish camp mainly worries about resistance from densely packed trapped positions above and the liquidation risks in the derivatives market. They believe that without strong fundamental catalysts, any rebound is difficult to sustain.

Market analyst IncomeSharks points out that Ethereum faces repeated rejections at the super trend line on the daily chart, with strong channel resistance near $2,250, leaving sellers still in control.
Analyst Dom warns that if Ethereum cannot effectively hold above the volume-weighted average price (VWAP) of $2,140, the price will remain trapped within a predefined range.
There remains a liquidation amount of $2.66 billion for long positions near $1,800 for Ethereum.

Bullish Viewpoint

The bullish camp sees strong signals of a bottom reversal from valuation repair, funding rate reversal, and divergence from U.S. stocks.

Renowned economist Krugman explicitly states that Ethereum is showing early signs of bottoming out, marking the first bullish divergence of cryptocurrencies relative to U.S. stocks since last year, suggesting that the crypto market may hit bottom first when U.S. stocks peak.
Analyst Trader Tardigrade believes that Ethereum is currently testing the multi-year support trend line at $1,800-$1,900, and historical experience shows that if this position is maintained, prices will see a parabolic explosive rise.
Analyst Pelin Ay points out that the funding rate for ETH on Binance has sharply turned positive from negative, indicating that the previously aggressive shorts have been squeezed out, and the market structure is shifting in favor of the bulls.

Key Data (as of February 27, 13:00 HKT)

(Data source: CoinAnk, Upbit, SoSoValue, CryptoBubbles)

Bitcoin ETF: + $254 million, net inflow for 3 consecutive days
Ethereum ETF: + $6.5742 million, net inflow for 3 consecutive days
SOL ETF: + $507.8 thousand
XRP ETF: + $1.2163 million
Fear and Greed Index: 13 (extreme fear)
Upbit 24-hour trading volume rankings: XRP, BTC, ETH, ENSO, CFG
Sector performance: GameFi sector up 6.21%, AI sector down 2%

A total of 94,779 people globally were liquidated, with a total liquidation amount of $196 million, of which BTC liquidations amounted to $60.3056 million, ETH liquidations to $48.453 million, and SOL liquidations to $8.8097 million.

Today's Outlook

Binance Alpha will launch the Fabric Protocol (ROBO) on February 27
Binance will delist many spot trading pairs including DOT/BRL and GRT/ETH on February 27
Jupiter (JUP) will unlock approximately 250 million tokens on February 28, valued at approximately $49.4 million
Grass (GRASS) will unlock approximately 55 million tokens on February 28, valued at approximately $13.48 million

The largest gains among the top 100 cryptocurrencies today: Power Protocol up 71.4%, Decred up 13.3%, Stable up 9.9%, Internet Computer up 7.8%, MemeCore up 6.5%.

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